to look in other directions; but the truth, once seen, could not pass from the range of mental vision.  I have never told you that I saw Mr. Emerson five years ago.  The effect of that meeting was such that I could not speak of it, even to you.  We met on one of the river steamboats—­met and looked into each other’s eyes for just a moment.  It may only be a fancy of mine, but I have thought sometimes that, but for this seemingly accidental meeting, he would have married again.”

“Why do you think so?” asked Mrs. Everet.

Irene did not answer for some moments.  She hardly dared venture to put what she had seen in words.  It was something that she felt more like hiding even from her own consciousness, if that were possible.  But, having ventured so far, she could not well hold back.  So she replied, keeping her voice into as dead a level as it was possible to assume: 

“He was sitting in earnest conversation with a young lady, and from the expression of her face, which I could see, the subject on which he was speaking was evidently one in which more than her thought was interested.  I felt at the time that he was on the verge of a new life-experiment—­was about venturing upon a sea on which he had once made shipwreck.  Suddenly he turned half around and looked at me before I had time to withdraw my eyes—­looked at me with a strange, surprised, startled look.  In another moment a form came between us; when it passed I was lost from his gaze in the crowd of passengers.  I have puzzled myself a great many times over that fact of his turning his eyes, as if from some hidden impulse, just to the spot where I was sitting.  There are no accidents—­as I have often heard you say—­in the common acceptation of the term; therefore this was no accident.”

“It was a providence,” said Rose.

“And to what end?” asked Irene.

Mrs. Everet shook her head.

“I will not even presume to conjecture.”

Irene sighed, and then sat lost in thought.  Recovering herself, she said: 

“Since that time I have been growing less and less satisfied with that brief, troubled portion of my life which closed so disastrously.  I forgot how much the happiness of another was involved.  A blind, willful girl, struggling in imaginary bonds, I thought only of myself, and madly rent apart the ties which death only should have sundered.  For five years, Rose, I have carried in my heart the expression which looked out upon me from the eyes of Mr. Emerson at that brief meeting.  Its meaning was not then, nor is it now, clear.  I have never set myself to the work of interpretation, and believe the task would be fruitless.  But whenever it is recalled I am affected with a tender sadness.  And so his head is already frosted, Rose?”

“Yes.”

“Though in years he has reached only manhood’s ripened state.  How I have marred his life!  Better, far better, would it have been for him if I had been the bride of Death on my wedding-day!”